Dear Wife(88)
“Why, because after all these years I’m finally standing up for myself? That doesn’t make me a bitch, it makes me brave. Now apologize.”
“No.” Even now, backed into a literal corner with nowhere to go but through a bullet, you won’t say the words. You can’t get them over your tongue.
I wag the gun, pointing in the air at your face. “Repeat after me, Marcus. I am a sorry excuse for a human and I apologize for ever hurting you.”
“No.” This time you shout it. You shake your head, your expression bitter. “You’re the one who should apologize, because this is all on you. I would have stayed with you forever. I would have died for you. You fucked this up, not me. I loved you, and you fucked us up.”
I shake my head. “You didn’t love me. You only loved what I could give you—control.”
“What? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You don’t give me control. I take it.”
And that right there is the crux of the problem. The one thing you did right. For too long, I allowed you to take my power. I was complicit in my own victimization. It took an outsider, another woman—Sabine—to make me see that in order to end this, I had to demand my power back.
I give the gun another wag—hello? I’m in control now—and it works. The fury drops off your face, and your eyes get glassy.
“You were wrong before, you know. I really do love you. You are the best thing in my life. The only part that makes it worth living. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never love anyone the way I love you.”
I shake my head. There is literally nothing you can say to make me lower this gun.
“Come on, babe. We still have good times. I can still make you laugh, and remember all those days last summer on the river? You, drinking wine and sitting between my legs while I rowed? Let’s go home and do that again. Let’s pack a picnic and take out the boat.”
Your words are as manipulative as your apologies, the fake tears and grand romantic gestures that always come after a beating. A year ago, I might have said okay. I might have said you are not well, you have a problem—I won’t let you work through it alone. But I’m not the same person I was ten months ago, when I started planning this. Not the person I was ten days ago, either, when I told Sabine goodbye.
I’m Beth Murphy now, and Beth Murphy knows what you’re about to do.
I know it from the way your weight shifts and your eyes get squinty at the corners. The way your hands tense into tight, white fists, how your muscles vibrate but your knees get loose and liquid. You are a predator, ready to pounce.
At the first sign of a lunge, I tilt the barrel a half inch to the right and squeeze the trigger. Even though I was prepared for it, the pop reverberates up my arm and through my bones, a shock to my system.
But it’s nothing like the shock on your face. The bullet whizzes past your ear, and I bet it makes a whistling sound, doesn’t it? I bet it feels like fire where it nicks your skin—only a millimeter or two but hot enough to send you staggering. One foot lurches back, but there’s nowhere for it to go. Your other boot connects with the rooftop’s rim, and your weight tumbles backward. Your ass hangs over the highway.
You teeter on the edge for what feels like forever. Long enough for you to lift a hand to your ear and come away with blood. Long enough for me to lower the weapon and step back. Long enough for you to open your goddamn mouth and tell me you’re sorry.
And then, just like that, you’re gone.
BETH
Four months later
I arrive twenty-seven minutes into the Sunday service, halfway through a hymn that sounds more like a rock ballad. A good forty singers are lined up across the back of the stage in bright purple robes, their expressions glorious on the twin LED screens above their heads. The Reverend sings along at the far end, tapping a tambourine in time on his knee. Their faces, their entire bodily beings radiate joy, as do those of the people around me, a full house of people swaying to the music. What did Martina call it? Happy-clappy, though now that I’ve seen it for myself, I’d sooner call it euphoric. Enough that nobody notices when I slip into an upper row seat.
Not that anyone here would recognize me, now that my hair is back to its original color, the deep mahogany God originally intended. A couple more months and it’ll touch my shoulders. Then again, maybe I’ll leave it like this, in a bob just long enough I can tuck a curl behind my ears. Now that I’ve gotten used to it being short, I rather like the freedom of fresh air on my neck. Sure beats the weight of hair, or the feel of Marcus’s hand on it. And a woman at the airport yesterday said the haircut suited me, that it was sassy. I don’t feel sassy quite yet, but I’m getting there.
Is it weird that I still hear his voice? It’s annoying, certainly, and maybe a little crazy, but sometimes I’ll be going about my day, heating up a can of soup for lunch or brushing my teeth before bed, and he’ll bitch about how I’m doing it all wrong. “Put the cap on the tube. You’re making a mess. And lay off the ice cream. You’re looking a little hippy.”
You you you. Bad bad bad.
But I’m not the same Emma he pushed around for all those years. Now I do what I couldn’t when he was still here: I ignore him. I let him go on and on and I act like I don’t hear a thing. I read a book, take a long bubble bath, bake brownies and eat half the pan. This will not be his lasting legacy, this ability to take up space rent-free in my head, making me feel shitty about myself. If Marcus talks and I pretend not to hear, is he really there?